


Men's Synch 3m Platform

by onlydance



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Father Figures, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Parent Tony Stark, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Trash Baby, but in a literal sense, dumpster diving, may parker says fuck cops, peter parker is a raccoon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29086614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlydance/pseuds/onlydance
Summary: or 5 times Peter Parker goes dumpster diving, and one time he does something else..." “You took my nephew dumpster diving?” Ben asked incredulously.His wife stood tall with a toddler strapped to her chest, tugging at one end of a couch with all her might. “I did not,”“Twash!” Peter yelled."
Relationships: Ben Parker & Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Richard Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 10
Kudos: 224





	Men's Synch 3m Platform

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, welcome, I wrote this thing for all the appreciators of the fine dumpster arts, and the folks who just like peter parker & tony stark not dying. okay, have fun lads.

**1.**

“You took my nephew dumpster diving?” Ben asked incredulously. 

  
His wife stood tall with a toddler strapped to her chest, tugging at one end of a couch with all her might. “I did not,” 

“Twash!” Peter yelled. 

“Very good, Petey,” May Parker turned back to her husband and pointed at the couch. A real leather couch that had been carelessly put down next to a dumpster. “It’s designer, Ben,” 

Ben crossed his arms. “We don’t need a new couch,”

“We’ve had the same couch since college- there’s still a puke stain in the pillow from when we had a party with all those economics students,” May argued.

Peter nodded excitedly. “thewe’s pewk, uncle Ben,” he said.

  
Ben took a deep breath, trying desperately not to absolutely melt at the sight of his nephew. “You’re right, Peter, there’s puke,” May encouraged him.

“So a couch from a dumpster is better than the couch we have now,” 

“Yes,” 

Ben sighed loudly. “It’s a nice couch,” he admitted. “But if Richard finds out you took Peter dumpster diving, we’re dead, Mary’ll dissolve our body in acid and feed us to their spiders,”

The little boy looked at him with his wide eyes, almost buzzing with excitement. “Spidews awe califownia,” 

May frowned. “Do you think mommy and daddy will move to California after they’ve brutally murdered us for subjecting you to trash fumes?” She asked, the two scientists seemed more like east coast people. 

“He’s  _ two _ you can’t-” Ben tried, but Peter interrupted him.

  
“No!  _ Spidews _ awe califownia, they eat meat,”

Ben and May locked eyes and promptly broke out into a fit of laughter. “You mean spiders are carnivores, Pete?”

Peter nodded. “Tha’s what  _ I _ said,” 

May plopped down on the couch, making Peter giggle. “Come on, Ben, it’s a free couch,”

“It’s gotta be illegal, right, you can’t just pick things off the street if you want them,”

“Finders keepers, Mr. Policeman,” She patted the empty seat beside her, inviting him to come sit. 

The man rolled his eyes, but sat down anyways. “Normally, after people say that to me, they run away,”

“Good for them,” May grinned. “F da police, you know,”

“Usually,” Ben said. “When people say that they don’t mean it in the literal sense,” he joked.

May put on a scandalised face and covered her nephew’s ears with her hands. “I don’t mean it in the literal sense either, you police people suck ass,” 

“Rude,”

Peter tugged at the hands around his ears and bent his head backwards to look at his aunt. “Meanie!” 

“Do you want us to get the couch, Petey?” Ben asked.

The young boy nodded. “Youw couch smewws wike fawts,” He said matter-of-factly.

“There you have it, Ben, the child has spoken.” May got up. “You carry under there, I carry this side, we’ll have the couch home in a minute.”

They didn’t have the couch home in a minute. The elevator had broken down and they carried the designer leather couch up 5 floors to their apartment, where it only fit through the door at a very specific angle. Peter had talked about lizards for a majority of the time. 

May stripped the leather upholstery from the couch to throw it in the washer, putting Peter down on their current couch. It had a blue and white checkerboard pattern that had, over time, turned green and yellow. 

“I wonder what was wrong with the couch that they threw it out,” Ben said loudly, so his wife could hear him from where she was standing in the kitchen. He sat down in his usual spot on the couch, taking Peter in his lap. 

“Don’t you start that, Benjamin Parker,” May appeared in the living room, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. “It’s a perfectly nice couch, which I will clean,” 

“We could’ve figured something out if you wanted a new couch,” Ben argued. 

The nurse shook her head. “Come on, you know how it’ll go,” she said. “We’ll pick up extra shifts, work our asse- butts off for months and then Mary and Richard will swoop in and go ‘we’ll pay for it’ and take pity on us, like we’re not two fully grown adults who can manage their own lives perfectly fine, thank you very much.”

A beat of silence passed between, only Peter playing with his dinosaur figurines making any sort of sound. 

“Is this about the tv?” Ben asked.

His wife shook her head. “No,” she bit the inside of her cheek.

“Yes it is,” He looked at the tv, an older model Richard and Mary had given them a few weeks ago when they had bought a new, slimmer one. “It’s just their old one, it’s no big deal, ours was from the 70s, May,”

“I know we needed a new tv, but we’re no charity cases,” she huffed. “Sure, we were late on rent that one time, but we’re accomplished professionals, just like them. I’m a nurse,  _ I save lives _ , what makes them any better than us,”

Ben moved Peter off his lap and stood up. “Richard is my older brother, it’s just what he does,”

May sighed. “I  _ know _ ,” she raised her hand to her head. “I love Richard,  _ and _ Mary for that matter, but it just feels like they’re taking pity on us. I sound crazy for- well, not liking the free stuff, but we’re not helpless, we’re not charity cases.” 

“They’re always going around giving us tv’s and paying for dinner and Jesus Christ, sometimes it feels like they’re practically rushing to leave Peter here because they know that we can’t-” she cut herself off. “ _ And _ don’t want them either,”

Ben wrapped his wife in a hug. “We can throw the tv out the window and get a better one, or we can sell this one, put the old one back and buy some fancy pillows for our new couch,”

May sniffed and looked up at him. “Don’t,” she said. “The old one can’t show the colour orange,”

“It can’t?”

“Stop making colourblindness jokes,” May elbowed him in the side. “You’re not funny,”

Something poked her knee and May looked down to see her two year old nephew arms high, waiting for her to pick him up. She bent down and grabbed him. “What’s up, kiddo?” 

“You need a hug,” he said and wrapped his arms around her neck. “Doctow’s odews,”

“Well if the doctor says so,” May grabbed him tightly.

  
  
  
  


**2.**

It had been over 20 years.

  
More than 20 years now since the day Richard and Mary broke into the school lab to check on their experiment in the middle of the night, drunk off their asses following their first date. 

They had aced that assignment, gotten married once the both of them had received their masters, Mary had bullied him relentlessly when she got her PhD before him, and eventually they both ended up at Oscorp, in charge of their own lab, with a beautiful son.

He laid soundly in his bed, his wife besides him. He heard someone stepping closer and closer to his bed, almost like they were scared of taking another step. Beside him, a little, guilty voice said. “Daddy,”

Richard turned around to face the source of the voice, Peter, his son. “What is it, Pete?” He asked, a small smile on his face.

“I dropped Poo down the slide,”

He sat up. “Slide? What slide?”

“The slide in the kitchen, Poo wanted to go down the slide,” 

Richard raised his hand to his forehead. “You mean the one with the hatch? That one?”

Peter nodded. He loved that boy so much, and he was the smartest child Richard had ever met, but for a second he wanted to slide back into bed and continue this conversation when it wasn’t 4 in the morning.

He stood up and bent backwards, hearing his back crack. He grabbed his son's hand. “Can you show me the slide?” He asked, desperately wishing that the ‘slide’ his son was talking about wasn’t what Richard thought he was thinking about. 

Peter unclasped himself from his dad and pointed at the hatch in the kitchen, the one that opened the trash chute. 

Richard closed his eyes for just a second. It was wednesday night, in 3 hours the garbage men would be picking up Peter’s favourite toy, only to drag it away to wherever stuffed animals go when they’re thrown into a trash chute by a six year old at 4 in the morning.

  
“Go put on your coat,” Richard told his son.

He grabbed his bathrobe, put on his running shoes, and hung the house key around his neck. Peter had on his coat and his Captain America slippers.    
  


Richard grabbed his hand and opened the door. “What were you even doing up?” he asked as they were walking downstairs.

“Nightmare,” Peter confessed. 

“About what?” 

  
Peter shrugged. “Planes and stairs and there was a big troll that ate the plane and Aunt May turned into a dog and then she ate my shoes,”

“Sounds scary,” Richard mused. 

“Yeah,” 

  
“You can always come to mommy and daddy, you know that right?” 

The little boy nodded. “I know that, but I was practising,”

Richard quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, you were? For what?”

“When I’m bigger,”

Richard stopped right there, crouching down to his son’s level. “Pete, even if you were as big as a house, you can still come to us,”

“I will,”

  
They walked silently down the stairs, Peter cringed at the smell as they came closer to the large dumpster just under the trash chute. Richard looked for Peter’s bright blue stuffed rabbit in the mess of black trash bags, spotting it wedged just between two bags.

“Sweetie,” He crouched down next to his son again. “Promise me you’ll never tell mommy about this,” 

Peter nodded solemnly. “I’ll pinky promise you,” he held out his pink for his dad to link his pink with. Richard shook his son’s pink urgently. 

“I’m going to hold you by the legs and you’re going to pull Poo out, alright?”

He felt like such a horrible dad in the very moment after that, when he was holding his son by his ankles into a dumpster, in his bathrobe, at 4 in the morning, especially when Peter began to shake with uncontrollable laughter and he accidentally dropped his son in.

For a second it was completely quiet and then Peter popped out of the trash with his dirt covered stuffed rabbit clutched in his arms, yelling “Poo!” 

“Yay!” Richard said, trying to muster excitement. “Poo’s back,”

He tried to reach for his son, but Peter didn’t seem to notice. “Come over here, Peter, let me get you out,”

Peter balanced across the trashbags, losing one of his slippers in the process. As Richard was pulling out his son, the boy’s lip began to quiver and Richard could only pray to whichever deity that was still awake at this hour that he wouldn’t cry.

“I’ll buy you new ones, I promise,” 

  
Peter went still for a second, like he was thinking. “Diego ones,” he demanded. “And a friend for Poo,”

“Another friend for Poo?” Richard asked, Peter’s room was covered head to toe in stuffed animals and toys, but Peter’s lip began to quiver again. “Alright! another friend for Poo,”

“Let’s get you into a shower,” He said. “Poo too, you can shower together,” 

He grabbed his son and placed him on his hip, making quick strides up the stairs and back into their house. He quietly opened the door and placed his son and his son’s stuffed animal in the shower, clothes still on.

“Daddy,” Peter said suddenly. 

“Yeah, champ?”

“I lied,” He said and calmly continued to shower, rubbing soap all over his t-shirt. Richard grabbed the soaking wet piece of cloth and took it off of Peter. 

“What about?” He wrung the shirt out above the sink and threw it into the hamper. 

“Why I didn’t wake you and mommy,” 

Richard frowned, placing his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t practicing for being grown up, I was practicing for when I go to auntie May and uncle Ben,” he confessed. “if I have a nightmare when you and mommy are working,” 

“And why wouldn’t you go to your aunt and uncle?”

Peter shrugged. “They don’t want me to,”

“Did they say that?”

Peter paused. “No,”

“Then how do you know?” Richard asked softly.

“I just do,” Peter insisted. 

Richard rubbed the no tears shampoo through his son’s hair. “Then let’s say, when you go to stay with Ben and May we ask them, and if they say no, which they won’t, you can just call me and mommy at our hotel,”

“They will say no,” 

“Do you really want to bet on this, young man, because I  _ will _ bet on it,”

Peter nodded. “I bet you all the hugs in the world that they’ll say no,”

“I’ll bet you all the hugs in the universe, that they won’t say no,”

Richard tucked his son into bed, after that, clean and tired. He laid back down under the warm sheets of his bed next to his wife. She hummed softly as he wrapped an arm around her. “Wha’ happened?” she asked, still half asleep.

  
He hugged her more closely. “Peter was hosting an illegal betting ring in his room,” he joked, but his wife was already snoring into her pillow.

  
  


**3.**

When Peter Parker was 9 years old, he was standing in a dumpster with his uncle, well  _ he _ was standing in a dumpster and his uncle was looking at him with a scowl on his face, because this wasn’t what he was expecting when his nephew asked him to hang out that day.

“Grab that for me, will you?” Peter ordered, he pushed his glasses back up his face with his wrist, careful not to touch his face with his ‘trash hands’

“What?” 

“The computer,” Peter said, pointing towards the large rectangular object. Now that Ben looked at it properly, he recognised the Dell logo on the side.

Ben sighed and lifted himself into the dumpster. “Why do you do this, Pete?” He grabbed the computer and lifted it on the lid of the dumpster next to the one they were in.

“It’s fun,” Peter said excitedly. “I almost have enough parts to build a super mega quantum computer,”

Ben frowned. “Doesn’t quantum mean really really small? That kind of contradicts the super mega,”

“Well, officially it’s the minimal amount of a physical entity involved in an interaction, but I only said it because it sounds cool,” Peter pushed his glasses up again.

The boy let out a loud squeal as Ben prepared to jump out of the dumpster, he was really getting too old for this. “What is it? Is it a raccoon, because we’ve been getting lots of calls-”

“It’s a StarkPhone!” he yelled. “I’ve always wanted to take a look at these,”

Ben laughed. “Shall I put it in the bag?” 

Peter was moving to hand it over, but retracted his arm quickly. “Be careful,”

Ben jumped out of the dumpster and put the phone in Peter’s backpack, a plain red one with a knockoff Mickey Mouse keychain. 

Peter poked around for another second and then tried to jump out of the dumpster, but he couldn’t pull himself up. Ben had to reach over and carry his nephew out of the dumpster. Peter’s shirt, one that had once been white, had a gross smear across the front, but the boy didn’t seem to mind. 

“We should try the one next to Mrs. Alvarez’s house,” Peter said. “She has rich neighbours, she says they’re ‘dirty gentrifiers’,” 

  
The policeman frowned. “Another dumpster?”

“I don’t have a screen,” The boy shrugged. “ _ Aunt May _ always takes me to the dumpster by Mrs. Alvarez’s house,” 

The mention of his wife was so sneaky, because both Ben and Peter knew that May was the queen of dumpster diving, that’s how she’d furnished half the apartment. People always seemed to be throwing out chairs and tables and lamps and closets and it was a bit like window shopping, but for less money.

It wasn’t like they were eating out of the tresh, or taking people’s used socks, though that wasn’t the weirdest thing Ben had seen someone do with other people’s trash as a New York citizen and police officer, they were just taking things that people were too lazy to donate.

“Besides,” He said. “I want to make something cool for next year’s Stark Expo, ‘cause then I’ll be old enough to enter the extra junior science booth competition,”

“We’re not going to another Stark Expo after this year,” Ben told him. Peter frowned and jutted out his lip, pouting with all his might. “You were almost killed by a flying robot,”

The boy shook his head. “I personally aided in the defeat of a flying robot,”

“Sure you did, kid, but maybe you can single handedly carry your own trash?” He tried to hand the computer to Peter, who immediately succumbed under the weight. Ben laughed and took the computer back. “That’s what I thought,” 

Peter crossed his arms. “Not fair,” he said. “Not fair at all,”

  
  
  


**4.**

Peter’s super mega quantum computer lived to see the age of six with spare parts from four separate computers, until an eccentric billionaire hacked it, totally unprovoked of course, and replaced it with a fancy laptop.

Somewhere in his heart, Peter missed the super mega quantum computer, but somewhere in his heart he was glad he didn’t have to bend the cable with his foot to make it work anymore.

He pulled on his mask and heard Karen’s cheery voice greeting him. It was winter in New York and the city had nothing to show for it, except for the dreadful cold that seemed to bleed through his suit. “Karen,” he said, as he swung from the alley behind his building, the cold wind messing ever so slightly with his movement. “ _ Please _ turn on the heater,”   
  


“Initiating ‘cold as balls protocol’, would you like me to play the accompanying playlist?”

Peter snorted, remembering the playlist him and Ned had set up the last time it was a slow night. “Sure,” He paused on the side of a building and looked out over the city. “Anything on the police scanners?” 

“There is no active crime being reported,” Karen answered. 

Peter continued to swing, trying to look at the street while doing so. He heard the synth sounds and sleigh bells of Last Christmas in his ears and cursed Ned, it was barely November. “Do you hear anybody in distress?” 

“Screaming from- no, I apologise, Peter, they seem to be engaging in-”

“No!” Peter cut her off. “I don’t want to hear that,”

From where he was standing on the roof of a tall office building Peter could barely see his own apartment, he saw swarms of people moving through the street, they looked so small from up there. 

In the background of the song he was now listening to, some early 2000s break up song, he heard a weird screeching noise. It repeated, sounding more and more like a cry. At first he thought he might have accidentally added a club remix, but he realised after hearing the cry repeat again, that it had nothing to do with his song. “Turn it off, please Karen,” 

The music shut down and Peter could hear it more clearly, a strangled, high pitched crying noise. He jumped off the roof immediately, swinging towards the sound of the crying. An alley behind a Taco Bell of all places.    
  
A strange sense of clarity hit him. “Oh my god,” he said, clasping his hand to his mask covered face. “It’s a baby,” 

He looked around to see where a baby could be crying from, no windows were opened, there were no parked cars, no baby seats, no walkers, there was just the pungent smell of days old take out. 

“Karen,” Spider-Man started. “Where is the crying coming from?” Somewhere, deep down, Peter already knew.

“My sensors point to the trash disposal unit as the sound of the noise,” 

“You mean the dumpster?” 

“I do mean the dumpster,”

As quickly as he could, Peter ripped open the lid of the dumpster and he looked inside. Between brown take out bags that had never been picked up, dozens of black trash bags and many sticky cups, laid a little baby, wrapped in a towel. 

Peter reached towards the baby and it ceased crying, looking at him with wide curious eyes. “Hello,” He greeted softly. “I’ve got you, kiddo,” 

The baby weighed next to nothing and Peter could only wonder how long this little kid could have been lying in a dumpster next to a Taco Bell. “Call Mr. Stark,” he told his AI very urgently.

Baby grasped tightly in his arms, Peter climbed out of the dumpster. He lowered himself onto the curb. Peter whispered reassuring words to the little baby as the ‘phone’ rang.

“ _ I’m in the middle of a dinner with the King of Wakanda, this better be urgent, _ ” Tony Stark answered the phone. 

“I found a baby,” Peter told him.

There was a pause on the other side of the line. “ _ Good job? Did you return it to the parent- _ ”

“In a dumpster,” he interrupted. “I found a baby in a Taco Bell dumpster,”

There was another pause. “ _ I’m on my way, _ ” Mr. Stark said. “ _ Keep the baby alive, _ ”

Peter took off his gloves, and clamped them under his armpit. He tugged at the baby’s towel, so it covered the baby’s chest. The baby was very tiny, it had a few wisps of curly brown hair and wide hazel eyes. “What’s your name, then?” he asked, awkwardly petting the baby’s arm.

The baby blinked at him. “Who am I kidding, you’re a baby, you can’t talk,”

“How about Ben?” Peter said. “My uncle was named Ben, I’m kind of named after him too,”

“But what if you’re a girl? That’s not a good name for a girl, I mean, you could rock Ben if you really tried,” He shook his head. “I mean fu- screw the patriarchy, if you want to be Ben you can be Ben,” He stopped petting the baby’s arm and it broke out into tears.

  
“Karen?” he asked nervously. “What am I supposed to do?”

“According to my sources, the baby is most likely touch starved, resource shows not physically interacting with newborns can lead to developmental difficulties and death,” 

Peter breathed and held the baby closer. It barely weighed more than a book. “You’re not going to die on me, right kid, that’s a big no-no,”

“Do you think the baby can feel the heater?” He asked. “I mean it’s like negative 40,”   
  


“It is currently 27 degrees.” Karen corrected. “The heating element can not be felt outside the suit, therefore I would suggest using your gloves, which have a heating element as well, to warm the baby.”

Peter turned his gloves inside out and tucked them into the baby’s towel. He clutched the baby tightly to him. “You’re going to be alright,” he told the little kid. 

What disgusting excuse for a human being would leave a child in a dumpster? He honestly did not want to know.

He sat there for what felt like hours, the faint sounds of the city in the background. He noticed the blue glow of the Iron Man suit’s repulsors, the sound that it made. “Underoos,” Mr. Stark greeted. “How’s the trash baby?” 

“Mr. Stark!” Peter said, offended for the baby’s sake. 

Mr. Stark stepped closer to look at the baby, his suit still hanging halfway in the air. “What? It’s a baby from the trash, ergo ‘trash baby’,” 

“It’s still rude,” Peter told him. “I’ve just been calling the baby ‘Ben’ in my head, but I don’t even know if it’s a boy,”

Mr. Stark sat down on the curb next to Peter and took off his suit jacket. “Come on, give the kid to me,” he laid the suit jacket on his lap and waited for Peter to give him the baby. Peter reluctantly handed the baby over very carefully. 

The billionaire took the baby and enclosed it in the suit jacket, using it as a makeshift blanket. Peter gave him a puzzled look. “I’ve been taking parenting classes,” 

Peter looked even more confused. “What for?” 

“What do you think, kid?” 

His eyes widened underneath the mask and Mr. Stark laughed at him. “You mean?”

“It’s still a secret, so keep that big mouth of yours shut, Spiderboy,”

Peter raised his arms and hugged Mr. Stark’s side. “Get off me,” Mr. Stark said halfheartedly. “You’ll squash the trash baby,”

The young superhero heard the sound of sirens in the distance. “Congrats, Tony,” He said sincerely. 

Mr. Stark was quiet for a second. “That’s what it takes for you to call me ‘Tony’? Trash babies?” He shook his head. “I’ve told you to call me ‘Tony’ how many times? FRIDAY?” he asked his watch.

“You’ve asked Spider-Man one hundred and thirty-four times since you first met him, those are only the times I’ve been present to witness it,” FRIDAY answered. 

Peter snorted. “This was a ‘one time only’ thing, sorry Mr. Stark,” 

A New York City ambulance braked right in front of the alley and two EMTs jumped out. Mr. Stark handed the baby over. They asked a few quick questions to which Peter did not know the answer, while another EMT looked the baby over in the ambulance.

“Now we only have to wait to file a police report, and then we’re both going home,” Mr. Stark said as the ambulance sped away.

“There’s just one small problem, Mr. Stark,” Peter said.

Mr. Stark looked at him with a frown, presumably because Peter was back to calling him ‘Mr. Stark’. “And what’s that?” 

Peter held up his bare palms. “The baby still has my gloves,”

  
  
  
  


**5.**

  
  


Most billionaires had the ability to say they’d never once spent time inside a dumpster. Tony Stark had lost that ability the first time he did XTC, but had, since then, not spent that much time in dumpsters. 

Until Peter Parker, a human disaster, had dropped the backpack in which he’d left an assignment that was worth 10% of his Spanish grade that semester into a dumpster.

Usually, saying ‘I’m Tony Stark’ worked wonders when he wanted something done, but the sanitation workers of New York City, seemed to be the exception to that rule. 

Now he stood at a landfill with a tracking device and a teenage boy, looking for that very backpack. “I hate you so much,” Iron Man said, maneuvering past a couch he was pretty sure was rotting.

“You love me,” Peter corrected. “You said so yourself, right after you said ‘you’re like a son to me’, it was a very memorable moment, you were there,” 

“It was a temporary lapse of judgement,” Tony said. “You’re disowned, I’m taking you out of the will,”

“No take backsies.” Peter looked at his phone screen, where he was moving towards the red dot that belonged to his backpack. “Besides, it’s really not that bad,”

The older man clamped his nose shut with one hand. “Yes it is,”

“One time, when I was a kid, me and May found this bulky tv, and we turned it around and the entire screen was gone and there was a raccoon living in it,” 

Tony shook his head. “Your childhood concerns me in so many ways,”

“Says you,” Peter said. “I just went dumpster diving with my aunt, you’re the one who hacked the pentagon at 14,”

“I’m never telling you anything ever again,” 

Peter rolled his eyes and continued walking, Tony had to almost run to keep up with him. 

“There it is,” Peter pointed at the back of a red and blue Spider-Man backpack sticking out in a pile of trash bags. He pulled it out and swung it over his shoulder. Tony gagged. Peter swung the backpack at him for good measure. 

Tony wrapped the Iron Man gauntlet around his hand and took the backpack, he unzipped it carefully and took the contents of the backpack out, he handed them to Peter and then threw the backpack in the air, only to blow it up with his repulsors. 

“That’s a bit over the top, don’t you think, Tony?” 

“You don’t know where that thing’s been,” 

“Probably inside a dumpster,” Peter joked. 

“You’re not funny,”

Peter grinned. “No, I’m Peter,”

“You’re going to hell,”

  
  
  


**+1**

They were working in the lab like usual. Peter was in the corner with his schoolwork, while Tony was bent over his work, baby Morgan strapped to his chest in a baby carrier.    
  
Tony hummed along with the old hard rock that was playing in the background, and Morgan was fast asleep. Peter was writing like his life depended on it, scribbling along a piece of paper. He curled the paper up in a ball and threw it in the trashcan on the other side of the table he was working on, muttering “Kobe,” under his breath.

The billionaire looked over to him. “Are you okay?” 

“Always am,” Peter answered. 

“You know the point of this father figure type thing is asking for help when you need it,”

Peter turned around to look at Tony. “That’s rich coming from you,”   
  


“Come on, kid, you know the drill ‘Do as I say, not as I do,’ that’s what this is all about,” He lowered himself into a chair next to Peter. “Now, what’s got you throwing out all your work?”

“I just threw out one piece of paper,” Peter said defensively. 

One call to his aunt had told him that wasn’t true. “May said you’ve redone this essay 9 times already,”

“I hate the fact that you’re teaming up with her now, this co-parenting thing has made you two more powerful,” The teen complained. 

Tony smiled. “We’re just looking out for you,” He said. “Is this about the college essays, or…”

“The college essays,” Peter answered reluctantly. “I’ve been stuck on the MIT one for days, it’s the question about ‘an event in your life that had a big influence on you’ and it’s just going wrong. Yeah sure I lost my parents, and my uncle died in front of me, my homecoming date’s dad tried to murder me and that’s not even half of it, but I just can’t pick one that ‘influenced’ me,”

“How about you send them a signed picture of me and a cheque and we’ll be done with this whole thing?” Tony offered.

Peter laughed and shook his head. “I want to get in fair and square, you know,”

“I know for a fact that  _ I _ didn’t get in because of my essay,” He said. “It was a combination of my prepubescent good looks and my father’s money.” 

Morgan snored very loudly, making them both laugh. 

“How about we just take a break for now and we’ll get back to this over some food,” Tony slapped a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “You can take your little sister for a second, too, my back feels like the hulk drove over me with a bulldozer,”

“It’s because you’re old,”

Tony unclasped Morgan from the baby carrier and handed the baby to Peter. “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of your college fund being invested into that game you  _ love _ so much, Fortnite right?” 

Peter gasped. “There’s a baby present, you can’t just say the F-word,” He sat her down on his lap and she blinked awake with hilariously wide eyes. 

Holding tightly onto her, he wheeled across the lab in his office chair, which made Morgan giggle. He fished his failed essay out of the trash can and placed it on the desk. “Don’t you touch my baby with those trash hands!” Tony warned, pointing an accusing finger at Peter.

“Shut it,  _ dad _ , you have motor oil on your face,”

The billionaire checked his face in the glass reflection of the lab’s door, there was a smear of black across his cheek. “It’s my patented skin care routine,” He quipped.

Morgan continued to giggle. 

“Now, do you want Italian or Thai for lunch?” 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all, I hope you liked it, if you did, please leave a comment or kudos and recommend this work to other people. 
> 
> I wrote this bit when I realised that Peter probably did go dumpster diving, because that just feels like something he'd do and then I remembered that larger trash items that don't fit into the dumpsters in my city are always put down next to the dumpster and that includes like full couches, closets, kitchen sets, washing machines, beds, like you name it, it's there, and my mum sometimes takes those things home, because she thinks it looks nice, so we've got like mirrors and clothing racks from the trash, and I imagine May is kind of like that too, so she introduces Peter into the wonderful world of dumpsterdiving. 
> 
> Trash Baby is a boy and his name is Ben and he's adopted by a wonderful family and Spider-Man visits on his birthdays. 
> 
> Again, thanks for reading!


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